Fallujah - A history lesson. In the spring of 1920, T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) wrote...The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster. y ordinary cure.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) analysis - VIOLENT RESPONSE: THE U.S. ARMY IN AL-FALLUJA Marines quiet about brutal new thermobaric weapon used in Fallujah. In urban settings it is impossible to limit the effect of this weapon to combatants, and makes it virtually impossible for civilians to take shelter from their destructive effect.

The above document was originally revealed by a US soldier in rebuttal and objection to comments on the RAI video in this blog by Insomnia at Live Journal .

There are also numerous reports from embedded journalists that WP was fired on Fallujah, such as this one from the North County Times:"Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused.
...
The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call "shake 'n' bake" into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all weekThinkprogress.com shreds Pentagon's WP is 'no chemical weapon' angle.

“It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect.” -- Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11, who admitted US forces used napalm against Iraqi forces in March-April 2003. The Independent (UK), August 10, 2003

Top American General Defends use of Phosphorus. “White phosphorus is a legitimate tool of the military,” Pace said at a news conference in the military’s Pentagon headquarters. “A bullet goes through skin even faster than white phosphorus does.” Marine Corps Times, November 29, 2005

The wrong weapon in the wrong place - "The U.S. use of white phosphorus against insurgents in Iraq is immoral, counterproductive to our aims and has helped to solidify world opinion against us," says the L.A. Times.

A War Crime Within A War Crime Within A War Crime PDFBy: GEORGE MONBIOT on: 22.11.2005

Fallujah RevisitedPDF By Dahr Jamail 11-14-5 - "These exploded on the ground with large fires that burnt for half an hour. They used these near the train tracks. You could hear these dropped from a large airplane and the bombs were the size of a tank. When anyone touched those fires, their body burned for hours."
US used white phosphorus in IraqPDF 16 November 2005

In Fallujah, U.S. Declares War on Hospitals, AmbulancesPDF by Brian Dominick Nov 9, 2004 - Saturday morning, witnesses in Fallujah reported that an overnight air strike by US fighter crews had completely razed a trauma clinic, which was recently constructed using Saudi donations. Also destroyed were two adjacent facilities used by health care providers.

IRAQ: US used chemical weapons in Fallujah assault - The US military used internationally banned chemical weapons, including nerve gas, during their assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah last November, Dr Khalid ash Shaykhli, an Iraqi health ministry official, told a March 3 Baghdad press conference.

US Troops Covering Up Chem Weapons In Fallujah? By Dahr Jamail 1-19-5 - "At least two kilometers of soil were removed," he explained, "Exactly as they did at Baghdad Airport after the heavy battles there during the invasion and the Americans used their special weapons."

U.S. using chemical weapons against civilians: Iraqi leader By Aniket Alam - Mr. Azawi claimed that Iraqi resistance had discovered and identified mass graves of occupation soldiers in Iraq. "They are hiding their dead." This massive loss of personnel was forcing the U.S. Army to mobilise another 40,000 troops in Iraq, he said.

IRAQ - Poison gases were used in U.S. assault, say Fallujans - He said he had seen elderly women carrying white flags shot by U.S. soldiers. “Even the wounded people were killed. The Americans made announcements for people to come to one mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed.”

Falluja Atrocities Expose True Face of U.S. War by Joseph Nevins CommonDreams.org December 10, 2004 - A clinic doctor stated that American snipers killed many civilians, the youngest a four-year-old boy. An Associated Press photographer described U.S. helicopters shooting people trying to ford a river to safety. Among those slain was a family of five.

US army blocks aid convoy for Falluja Tuesday 30 November 2004 - "They told me that there is a crime in there; chemical weapons are being used. The corpses don't have traces of gunshots but black patches.

FALLUJAH NAPALMED By Paul Gilfeather Political Editor Sunday Mirror Nov 28 2004 - News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world.

ANOTHER WAR CRIME Posted Nov 22, 2004 - Take a close look at these dead bodies. Many have been stripped to the waist, and the body on the right is clearly wearing handcuffs. Since one does not handcuff an already dead man, we may conclude that this invidual at least met his death while already a prisoner of war.

SPEAKING OF WAR CRIMES - A Marine is heard saying that one of the wounded Iraqis was pretending to be dead. In response, a fellow Marine is seen aiming his rifle point-blank at the Iraqi, shooting him in the head, and casually remarking, "Well, he's dead now".

US Troops Shot Civilians Escaping From Fallujah Sun Nov 14, 2004 - "I decided to swim ... but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river."
He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross.

Denial Of Water To Iraqi Cities 11-14-4 Fallujah: History in the making - Who knows what the Americans will get up to during their bloody and violent onslaught. When I was there in April, American snipers shot a 10 year old boy in the head - I watched him die as his brave, innocent parents screamed in agony and grief, but insisted we film their dear little son's last moments.
I saw 2 middle aged women die - they had gone out of their homes to the shops, believing there to be a ceasefire and were shot at by American snipers - one died clutching a white flag.

Fallujah : America's Guernica by Hector Carreon La Voz de Aztlan - Fallujah today is America's Guernica and the USA media is covering up the criminal murderous military operation under way. In addition there is absolutely no outcry from the USA political establishment. This points to a deep spiritual and moral malaise among Americans and decay in the leadership of the USA.

'Scores of civilians' killed in Falluja Tuesday 09 November 2004 - Overnight US bombardments hit a clinic inside the Sunni Muslim city, killing doctors, nurses and patients, residents said. US military authorities denied the reports. [Of course they denied it, it's a war crime! -ed.]Collective Punishment Attack on FallujahThe Attack on Fallujah in April, 2004 is Collective Punishment for the killing of the 4 mercenary soldiers earlier and is taken right out of the playbook of Israeli tactics. It is also a war crime!Check out the Coalition Of The Killing At War With Independent Reporters section also.

Fleeing Fallujans killed as crisis deepens Thursday 29 April 2004 - Fallujans burn new Iraqi flag and curse US occupation US soldiers have fired on a minibus full of civilians near a checkpoint on the outskirts of the besieged Iraqi town of Falluja.

Report from Baghdad -- Hospital Closings and U.S. War Crimes Monday, April 19, 2004 by Rahul Mahajan - Baghdad, Iraq -- “Why do you keep asking about the closing of the Fallujah hospital?” my Iraqi translator asks in exasperation. I explain that this is big news, and it hasn’t really been reported in English. He looks at me, incredulous; all Iraqis know about it.

Fallujah Residents Report U.S. Forces Engaged in Collective Punishment by Dahr Jamail - Abu Muher said US warplanes were bombing the city heavily last Saturday prior to his departure, and that Marine snipers continued to take their toll, shot after shot, on residents of the besieged city. "There were so many snipers, anyone leaving their house was killed," he recalled.

GET OUT NOW, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!! By John Pilger April 17, 2004 The New Statesman - In Fallujah, US marines, described as "tremendously precise" by their psychopathic spokes- man, slaughtered up to 600 people, according to hospital directors.

Iraqi 'beaten to death' by US troops April 14, 2004 - US troops beat him with truncheons because he refused to remove a picture of wanted Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada Sadr from his car, police said today.

Iraq Solidarity Action – Resist the Massacre in Falluga - The Americans are dropping cluster bombs and new mortars, which jump 3-4 metres. They are bombing from the air. There are people lying dead in the streets. They said there’d be a ceasefire and then they flew in, I saw them, and they began to bomb.

Plea to lift siege as toll mounts Thursday 08 April 2004 - US helicopters and snipers are firing on ambulances and civilian vehicles trying to take the wounded to clinics or the hospital, the correspondent said.

Baghdad Burning Wednesday, April 07, 2004 - Falloojeh has been cut off from the rest of Iraq for the last three days. It's terrible. They've been bombing it constantly and there are dozens dead. Yesterday they said that the only functioning hospital in the city was hit by the Americans and there's no where to take the wounded except a meager clinic that can hold up to 10 patients at a time.

Scores dead as Falluja resists US onslaught Wednesday 07 April 2004 - "The situation is getting worse," he said. "An ambulance carrying casualties was attacked on its way to the medical centre.
The American forces closed the road leading to the city's hospital and everybody walking in the streets of Falluja is now becoming a target.

Below is a vastly expanded and reworked version
of a column originally published in the Nov. 11 edition of the Moscow
Times. For my first MT report on chemical warfare in Fallujah, see Filter Tips. For a report on the destruction of the city as it was happening, see Ring of Fire, from November 2004.

This week, the broadcast of a shattering new documentary (below) provided fresh confirmation of a gruesome war crime covered by this column nine months ago: the use of chemical weapons by American forces during the frenzied, Bush-ordered destruction of Fallujah in November 2004.

Using filmed and photographic evidence, eyewitness
accounts, and the direct testimony of American soldiers who took part
in the attacks, the documentary – "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre" –
catalogues the American use of white phosphorous shells and a new,
"improved" form of napalm that turned human beings into "caramelized"
fossils, with their skin dissolved and turned to leather on their
bones.

The film was produced by RAI, the Italian state network run by a
government that backed the war.

Vivid images show civilians, including women and
children, who had been burned alive in their homes, even in their beds.
This use of chemical weapons – at the order of the Bushist brass – and
the killing of civilians are confirmed by former American soldiers
interviewed on camera. "I heard the order to pay attention because they
were going to use white phosphorous on Fallujah," said one soldier,
quoted in the Independent. "In military jargon, it's known as Willy
Pete. Phosphorous burns bodies; in fact it melts the flesh all the way
down to the bone. I saw the burned bodies of women and children.
Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150
meters is done for."

The broadcast is an important event: shameful,
damning, convincing. But it shouldn't be news. Earlier this year, as
reported here on
March 18, a medical team sent to Fallujah by the Bush-backed Iraqi
interim government issued its findings at a press conference in
Baghdad. The briefing, by Health Ministry investigator Dr. Khalid
ash-Shaykhli, was attended by more than 20 major American and
international news outlets. Not a single one of these bastions of a
free and vigorous press reported on the event. Only a few small venues
– such as the International Labor Communications Association – brought word of the extraordinary revelations to English-speaking audiences.

Yet this highly credible, pro-American official of a
pro-occupation government confirmed, through medical examinations and
the eyewitness testimony of survivors – including many civilians who
had opposed the heavy-handed insurgent presence in the town – that
"burning chemicals" had been used by U.S. forces in the attack, in
direct violation of international and American law. "All forms of
nature were wiped out" by the substances unleashed in the assault,
including animals that had been killed by gas or chemical fire, said Dr
ash-Shaykhli.

But apparently this kind of thing is not considered news
anymore by the corporate gatekeepers of media "truth."

As we noted here in March, Dr ash-Shaykhli's findings
were buttressed by direct testimony from U.S. Marines filing
"after-action reports" on websites for military enthusiasts back home.
There, fresh from the battle, American soldiers talked openly of the
routine use of Willy Pete, propane bombs and "jellied gasoline"
(napalm) in tactical assaults in Fallujah. As it says in the
scriptures: by their war porn ye shall know them.

This week, as in March, the Pentagon said it only
used white phosphorous shells in Fallujah for "illumination purposes."
But the documentary's evidence belies them. Although there are indeed
many white bombs bursting in air to bathe the city in unnatural light,
the film clearly shows other phosphorous shells raining all the way to
the ground, where they explode in fury throughout residential areas and
spread their caramelizing clouds.

As Fallujah biologist Mohamed Tareq
says in the film: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck
by this multi-colored substance started to burn, we found people dead
with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact."

As word of the documentary spread across the Internet
and into a very few mainstream media sources, intrepid investigators
dug out even more confirmation of how Bush's battalions whipped out the
Willy Pete and flayed Fallujah's heathen devils with flesh-eating fire.

A Daily Kos diarist, Stephen D., dug
up one of the U.S. military's own publications, Field Artillery
Magazine, which eagerly related the use of white phosphorous, which
"proved to be an effective and versatile munition," the article said.
"We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the
fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in
trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them
with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP
to flush them out and HE to take them out."

Mr. D also points to a comment on Altercation.com,
that provides further ammunition – for "illumination purposes" – on the
effect of white phosphorous on human beings. There, Mark Kraft writes:
"There is no way you can use white phosphorus like that without forming
a deadly chemical cloud that kills everything within a tenth of a mile
in all directions from where it hits. Obviously, the effect of such
deadly clouds weren't just psychological in nature."

Another Kossack, "Hunter," digs
up mention of Willy Pete use as a weapon in Washington Post reports
from the battlefield itself last November. He then takes on the
hair-splitters who immediately arose on the Right to declare that white
phosphorous is not itself a banned substance, so it's OK to incinerate
children with it. Hunter's incandescant irony is worth quoting at
length:

"First, I think it should be a stated goal of United
States policy to not melt the skin off of children. As a natural
corollary to this goal, I think the United States should avoid dropping munitions on civilian neighborhoods which, as a side effect, melt the skin off of children.

You can call them 'chemical weapons' if
you must, or far more preferably by the more proper name of
'incendiaries.' The munitions may or may not precisely melt the skin
off of children by setting them on fire; they do melt the skin off of
children, however, through robust oxidation of said skin on said
children, which is indeed colloquially known as 'burning'…

"And I know it is true, there is some confusion over
whether the United States was a signatory to the Do Not Melt The Skin
Off Of Children part of the Geneva conventions, and whether or not that
means we are permitted to melt the skin off of children, or
merely are silent on the whole issue of melting the skin off of
children…[However] I am going to come out, to the continuing
consternation of Rush "Drug Rehab" Limbaugh and pro-war supporters everywhere, as being anti-children-melting, as a matter of general policy."

"One year ago this week, US-led occupying forces
launched a devastating assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja. The mood
was set by Lt Col Gary Brandl: 'The enemy has got a face. He's called
Satan. He's in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him.'

"The assault was preceded by eight weeks of aerial bombardment. US troops cut off the city's water, power and food supplies, condemned
as a violation of the Geneva convention by a UN special rapporteur, who
accused occupying forces of "using hunger and deprivation of water as a
weapon of war against the civilian population". Two-thirds of the
city's 300,000 residents fled, many to squatters' camps without basic
facilities…

"By the end of operations, the city lay in ruins.
Falluja's compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the
city's 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65
mosques and shrines. The US claims that 2,000 died, most of them
fighters. Other sources disagree. When medical teams arrived in January
they collected more than 700 bodies in only one third of the city.
Iraqi NGOs and medical workers estimate between 4,000 and 6,000 dead,
mostly civilians -- a proportionately higher death rate than in
Coventry and London during the blitz."

"One of the first moves in this magnificent feat of arms was the
destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their
patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on
one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's
main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why?
Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers,"
the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times.
Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no
unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds.
This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip
of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the
visuals were rigorously scrubbed."

When you begin by bombing hospitals, devouring
innocent people with hot jellied death is not exactly a stretch. It is
simply part and parcel of the inhumanity of the Bushist mindset.

Indeed, the slaughter in Fallujah was a microcosm of
the entire misbegotten enterprise launched by those two eminent
Christian statesmen, Bush and Blair: a brutal act of collective
punishment for defying the imperial will; a high-tech turkey shoot that
mowed down the just and unjust alike; an idiotic strategic blunder that
has exacerbated the violence and hatred it was meant to quell.

The
vicious overkill of the Fallujah attack alienated large swathes of
previously neutral Iraqis and spurred many to join the resistance. It
further entangled the United States and Britain in a putrid swamp of
war crime, state terrorism and atrocity, dragging them ever deeper into
a moral equivalency with the murderous extremists that the Christian
leaders so loudly and self-righteously condemn.

Let's give the last word to Jeff Engelhardt, one of
the ex-servicemen featured in the documentary, who recently issued this
plea to his fellow U.S. soldiers on Fight to Survive, a dissident web site run by Iraqi War vets...

"I hope someday you find solace for the orders you
have had to execute, for the carnage you helped take part in, and for
the pride you wear supporting this bloodbath. Until then, you can only
hope for an epiphany, something that stands out as completely immoral,
that convinces you of the inhumanity of this war. I don't know how much
more proof you need. The criminal outrage of Abu Ghraib, the absolute
massacre of Fallujah, the stray .50 caliber bullets or 40mm grenades or
tank rounds fired in highly packed urban areas, 500-pound bombs dropped
on innocent homes, the use of depleted uranium rounds, the inhumane use
of white phosphorus, the hate and the blood and the
misunderstandings…this is the war and the system that you support."

This Second video, in Macromedia Flash 8 format, has not been widely published The video is of a surreal shooting up of an Iraqi bus where soldiers are killing one minute and saving lives the next. It really reflects the confusion of Iraq - and the mix of emotion that rumbles through the soldiers as they morph from killers to healers in an instant. Click to see it here.

There is a long BREAK in the middle of the third video... please be patient as it streams into the second BBC video. It is in Macromedia Flash 8 format, has not been widely published - I am sure some of it has not been shown - the first part of the first video in particular where a British nurse/doctor enters a hospital in Fallujah after first passing through an insurgent checkpoint. The head doctor is highly disturbed with the slaughter that has taken place and is followed by an interview with an Iraqi women who talks about the snipers picking off everyone on the streets. After, is some footage that the BBC picked up from a freelancer which was certainly not shown in America. It shows the Fallujans burying their dead en masse... men, women and children after the sacking of their city. You can watch it here.

I recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man.
Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force?
Are there no means of coercing injustice more gratifying
to our nature than a waste of the blood
of thousands and of the labor of millions of our fellow creatures? ~Thomas Jefferson

This video is a montage of the IRAQ war. It's hard, fast and not very pretty. I was told it was ad for the US army but I find that hard to believe. This is absolutely the worst possible way to win the 'hearts and minds' of any people.

Coming Home - After Fallujah
Arab Journalist sneaks into Fallujah after Operation Phantom Fury two months after destruction of city. Click for video page here.

After Fallujah and Iraq were 'safer' according to the US military Brass. Not according to this documentary which shows footage of some of the thousands of refugees in makeshift camps - living in tents outside the city. Residents told the interviews that food aide had stopped and the were freezing and just wanted to go home. But go home to what?

When Fallujans returned home it difficult to try and even find out where they used to live. Seventy percent of the city was destroyed or severely damaged. Houses with dead bodies were marked by US Marines with a cross and a groups of Fallujan citizens were herded to collect the dead and bury them.

"We found the bodies right behind the front doors," said one resident. "It looked like they had opened their doors and were immediatly shot dead... these were mostly men who stayed behind to protect their own homes. It was Ramadam."

The film also shows the dead bodies of people who apparently asleep in their beds.

The Marine corporal filmed shooting a wounded and unarmed man in a mosque above - in Fallujah last November - was not be charged in connection with the incident by the U.S. Marine Corps investigative body.

In a statement, Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski said that an investigation including a review of the videotape of the shooting had determined that the Marine's action "was consistent with the established rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict."

(Location unknown) Wounded, another Iraqi writhes on the ground... The marines kill him.

(Location unknown)This video shows how US soldiers in Iraq, with the help of a robot, blow up a standing car that appears to have had an accident, while a young man, well alive but probably trapped, is still sitting in that car.

First we see Humvees and an M1 tank and a few hundred yards away a red car standing in the middle of the road. A tracked, radio controlled robot with video equipment is send to the lone standing car. The operators video screen shows the take from the robot's camera.

The red car looks like it had a very serious front crash - the hood is tilted upward, the engine compartment is smashed, the driver door is open. I do not have the impression that there had been an explosion at this point.

The robot's camera shows a young man in working trousers and a white undershirt in the red car's driver seat. He is alive and does not appear to be injured but is distressed - putting his head into his hands. He seems not to be able to move away. His right foot might be trapped with the pedals.

The robot drives around the car and comes back to the Humvees. A demolition charge is shown and through a helicopter camera we now see how the robot drags this to the red car.

The demolition charge, the red car and the young panicked man are blown up. There is NO secondary explosion. The next pictures show him falling from the side of the car. He is dead.

Now a still picture of what may be a self made bomb is shown, but it does not appear to be at the same scene. Another short last cut is of an explosion somewhere in an open field.

What has happened?

Was this a suicide bomber who failed to explode his load and had to be taken out?

Or was this some unlucky innocent guy who somehow had an accident, was trapped in his car and blown up by the US military because they feared him to be a bomber?

What is your take?

Mark Manning's tale of Fallujah should not be missed. Please read his incredible story by clicking here. He was an American who was in Iraq for the period that we are analysing here. And his story is horrific yet very clear as he battles his own mixed feelings of what he witnesses in Fallujah - a place where he knew and liked people from all sides of the face off. There's a short clip of his video below in Macromedia Flash 8

DVD: "Falluja: April 2004"
Falluja has become a symbol of the resistance movement against the occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces. In April 2004, the U.S. forces invaded Falluja with several thousand soldiers. Why did Falluja become a base of the resistance against the occupation? How did the U.S. forces attack? Who fought against them? And what damages and injuries did people suffer? Ten days after the siege of Falluja was lifted, Toshikuni Doi, a Japanese independent journalist, went into Falluja. His documentary, investigates the causes of, conditions during, and damages from the siege. The documentary is primarily in Arabic, with English subtitles. DVD, 55 minutes. $34.00 — individual rate

Fallujah was one of the most peaceful areas of the country just after the fall of Saddam.... there wasn't much looting and pillaging and the new mayor of the city, selected by local tribal leaders - Taha Bidaywi Hamed - was more Pro-American than most in the country.

An altercation developed with U.S. troops in Fallujah and suddenly 15 Iraqi civilians lay dead... killed by U.S. gunfire.

There were no US casualties in the flare up.

On March 31, 2004 - four American contractors are murdered in the city and images of their dangling, mutilated bodies are broadcast around the world.

The next week, American troops launched Operation Vigilant Resolve. On 19 April, a ceasefire was called with many deaths on both sides.

On 7 November 2004 - Operation Phantom Fury began. It is estimated that 70 per cent of the buildings in Fallujah were destroyed during the US led Coalition Forces offensive on Fallujah with an estimated 30,000 houses damaged and more than 5,000 totally destroyed. In addition, around 8,500 shops, 60 mosques and 20 government offices required massive repairs. Hundreds of Iraqis, holed up in the city,

The Monitoring Network for Human Rights (MHRI), which consists of more than 20 Iraqi organizations for Human Rights, made this report about the crimes and continuous violations of human rights in Iraq.

1. Crimes of War and Crimes Against Humanity

- First crime:

Some of the ugliest crimes committed by the occupation forces and by Iraqi military units are the ones committed in the city of Fallujah in the battles of November 2004, and which we summarize in the following:

1. The plundering of health care centers and their destruction by bombing as has taken place in the "Taleb Al-Janabi" hospital and in the Central Clinic. Further the Central Hospital was occupied; the staff and everyone in the hospital at that time were arrested. Ambulances in the city have been bombed and the rescue teams were hindered from entering the city, among them the convoy of the Ministry of Health, despite of the fact that more than 50,000 civilians still remained in the city.

2. Internationally prohibited weapons were used in the bombing of the city, such as phosphoric weapons, Napalm, bombs containing unknown gases, causing the blood to explode out of bodies. 24 carbonized bodies have been found in the area of the military neighbourhood. Surviving civilian eyewitnesses stated that the soldiers of the occupation forces entered the area wearing gas masks. Furthermore, cases of deformed newly born increased as a consequence of the use of such weapons. In a press conference, which took place during the battle, Mr. Khaled Al-Sheikhali, official of the Ministry of Health, confirmed the use of such weapons.

3. More than 280 missing persons are reported from among the inhabitants of the city of Fallujah. Their fate is still unknown. These persons are officially registered by names and by photo at the local authorities in the city. It is further estimated that the total number of missing persons exceeds 500.

4. Rescue teams, who were allowed to free the city from corpses, to prevent diseases to spread among the soldiers, affirmed that there was a great number of civilian corpses lying in areas, indicating that they were neither armed nor resisting when they were attacked. Bodies were found in beds, kitchens or on chairs, bodies of children near those of their fathers. Further they found bodies of women, their dresses torn, their features disfigured. Many of the dead showed head wounds, which indicate that they were murdered from short distance and in the manner of executions.

5. The existence of a mass grave with approximately 400 bodies in the "Sajar" area, an area protected by the US Forces, shooting anyone approaching it. The US Officials responsible for burying the dead in the city, admitted to one rescue team, that they had buried 380 bodies in this area after the end of the battle, and that these bodies had previously been stored in a refrigerator originally used for the storage of potatoes.

6. The dogs in Fallujah are infected with different diseases as a result of their eating corpses, and are now endangering the health of the citizens.

7. Arrested civilians were forced to participate in cleaning the city from the remains of the battle and what has been used in it. In one of the disposal sites of these remains, bodies of fighters and civilians, among them women and children were found. The entrance to these areas is prohibited.

8. Information on the whereabouts of some of prisoners, who were transferred to the "Buka" prison in Basra, is lost although they had been seen by other prisoners who were released later. One case is that of Sheikh Shaker Hamdan Abdullah Fayyad Al-Kabeesi, who was arrested on the 11th October 2004 in Fallujah, carrying "Buka" prisoner's number 165251, and who was supposed to be released on the 22nd of December 2004 but still remains missing.

9. Many civilians trying to escape the hell of shell firing were victims of snipers, who were following US orders to shoot at anyone who moves, even at children. Many civilian eyewitnesses affirmed that the streets of their neighborhoods were full of dead civilians, killed on their way to take refuge in the nearest mosques, following US appeals to do so. M.A. states that his father was wounded by a bullet that penetrated his nick and his mother was killed by snipers as they were on their way to the mosque. He states that he dragged his wounded father to the "Al-Hadra Al- Mohammadiya" mosque, were they were arrested but released a few days later. He does not know what has become of his mother's body.

10. Survivors of the battle assure that US Forces killed the wounded resistance fighters in the sport field of "Sumud" Club. This explains the refusal of the US Forces to see or transport the bodies of the mass graves in "Sajar" and those bodies left in the heaps of rubble.

11. Eyewitnesses confirm that 4 persons of the civilians seeking refuge at the "Al-Hadra Al-Mohammadiya" mosque, were led to a near wall, with their hands tied and their eyes covered, and were then executed there by US and Iraqi Forces, on the grounds of suspecting them to be fighters.

12. Despite the fact that more than 30,000 houses and buildings were destroyed in the battle, the US Forces continued to destroy empty houses before their inhabitants could return. US Forces destroyed in one day 20 houses in the "Shurta" neighborhood. These houses connected 2 schools, which were taken as military bases. The inhabitants of these houses confirm that they had seen their houses in good conditions only a few days before. The reason for the demolition was to secure clear vision on the surrounding areas.

13. The crimes committed against humanity in the city of Fallujah are still ongoing. The city has been turned into a big prison; its 350,000 citizens are not allowed to neither leave nor enter without undergoing abusive and despotic procedures, standing in contrast to the basic rules of Human Rights. Living conditions are extremely hard in many aspects of public life, in addition to transgressions by US soldiers, thereby increasing the suffering of the citizens of Fallujah.

14. The brutality of the crimes is most obvious in the case of the killing of injured and unarmed civilians in a mosque on the hands of a US soldier. Although there were many witnesses to this incident, the military court in which this case was later handled declared that the accused did not violate the security procedures, and was therefore found not guilty of any charge.